CÉSAR AUGUSTE JEAN GUILLAUME HUBERT FRANCK (1822 –1890) was a Belgian- French composer, organist and music teacher whose symphonic, chamber, and keyboard works are among the most distinguished contributions in the field by any French musician.

Franck’s music uses an essentially Post Romantic language, obviously influenced by Liszt and Wagner. Unusually for a composer of such importance and reputation, Franck's fame rests largely on a small number of compositions written in his later years, particularly his Symphony in D minor (1886-88), the Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra (1885), the Prelude, Chorale and Fugue for piano solo (1884), the Sonata for Violin and Piano in A major (1886), the Piano Quintet in F minor (1879), and the symphonic poem Le Chasseur maudit (1883).


Sonata in A Major for violin and piano (1886)
Through the A Major Sonata Franck affirms himself as the founder of the modern violin Sonata form. Among many great innovative elements the most important thing realized here is the placement of the central weight and resistance point in the final part of the sonata. Many romantic works of this genre can be out of balance because the finale does not correspond to the monumental structure of the first movement which exhausts already all the resources thus transforming the finale in an appendix, or a sort of “necessary harm”. Cesar Franck’s solution is ingenious: the first part unfolds with preparative, improvisatorial elements, along the way the discourse amplifies and the finale brings the denouement.

JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897) was a German composer and pianist, one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. In his lifetime, Brahms's popularity and influence were considerable; following a comment by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow, he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the Three Bs. As opposed to his contemporary Wagner, who promoted innovative means for the “art of the future” in his audacious musical dramas, Brahms stood for tradition in a Beethovenian sense, for the preservation of historically crystallized forms and genres; his attitude towards “music of the future” was rather ironical. The historical perspective acknowledges the values of both opposed artistic attitudes. Brahms “the classicist” created works which have not ceased to impress the audiences for the past century by their substantiality, their amazing beauty and depth and their outstanding craftsmanship. His four symphonies, two piano concertos, violin concerto, his chamber music works stand among the masterpieces of German and universal music.




Piano Quartet No.3 in C-minor, Op.60 (1855-1861-1875)
Brahms composed the first version of the work that would eventually become his Third Piano Quartet, Op. 60 (to which the subtitle "Werther" is often attached), in Dusseldorf in 1855-1856. The first version had emerged concurrently with first drafts for the first two piano quartets, Op. 25 and Op. 26, all received enthusiastically by his close friends, including Albert Dietrich and Joseph Joachim.

The definitive version is comprised of the 1855-1856 score's opening movement, a scherzo from 1856-1861, and an Andante and finale (allegro commodo) from 1875. The work, now in the general key of C minor, reflects the turbulent and vacillating self-doubts that Brahms felt so deeply. Indeed, little more darkly oppressive movements than the first exist anywhere else in Brahms' chamber output, while the "new" andante in E major is certainly one of the most beautiful. Above all, however, the work fully deserves its Goethe connections, for neither Brahms nor Werther enjoyed a contented course en route to their respective destinies.

The C minor Piano Quartet was first performed in Vienna on November 18, 1875, with Brahms himself at the piano, and members of the Hellmesberger Quartet.

ALEXANDR NIKOLAIEVICI SKRIABIN (1872-1915) was a Russian composer and pianist who initially developed a highly lyrical and idiosyncratic tonal language inspired by the music of Chopin, Liszt and Wagner. Skriabin stands as one of the most innovative and most controversial of early modern composers. Leo Tolstoy once described Skriabin's music as "a sincere expression of genius." He was one of the last romantics of the XIX th century, who believed in the magical power of art; he was convinced that humanity could be morally and spiritually redeemed through the creative process, to which he attributed cosmic dimensions. For his last work, “Prometheus”, Skriabin planned a synthesis of arts, a “symphony” of light, colors and fire. He was also preparing a “Mystery”, a work intended to be a collective act of transforming humanity through ecstasy. These demiurgic dreams were ironically severed by his premature, unexpected death. They said in those times that he died like Icarus.

“Skriabin’s creation is situated in a short period between two centuries: the XIX century with its great artistic and spiritual accumulations and the XX century with its social quakes and terrible scientific discoveries. (…)Love, ecstasy, struggle, longing are brought to a conceptual level and placed into a cosmic frame(…) For him music is also an immense act of will power(…) To his contemporaries Skriabin was an extravagant. (…) Skriabin saw himself as a realist of the fantastic; the latter was his reality.”

Sonata no. 5, op 53 (1907)
The fifth Sonata inaugurates the last period of Skriabin’s creation (1907) (…) It succeeds the “Poem of Ecstasy” and represents in a way its pianistic replica; the tragic condition is surpassed; through a supreme will straining the creative spirit identifies itself with the infinite; the spirit longs towards its starlike ideal end liberates itself from the material world through ecstasy. A polarization takes place in Skriabin’s music: the noble pathos, now devoid of tragicalness, is converted into an ecstatic cosmic orbit, and, on the other side, Skriabin’s lyrical refinement becomes paroxysmic, dematerializing music and placing it in the sphere of cosmic longing.
The Sonata ends with a kind of rapturous, Dionysian dance; the last measures bring back the chilling whirlwind, roaring messenger of the cosmos from the beginning of the piece.

GEORGE ENESCU (1881-1955) Romanian composer, violinist, pianist, conductor.
George Enescu is still considered the greatest of all Romanian composers. While he is widely known for just one famous opus, he was in reality a very imaginative, highly skilled composer of music possessing great depth and subtlety, as well as being one of the great concert violinists of his time.

Many of Enescu's works were influenced by Romanian folk music, his most popular compositions being the two Romanian Rhapsodies (1901–2), the opera Œdipe (1936), and the suites for orchestra. He also wrote five symphonies (two of them unfinished), a symphonic poem, Vox maris, and chamber music (three sonatas for violin and piano, two for cello and piano, a piano trio, quartets with and without piano, a wind decet (French, "dixtuor"), an octet for strings, a piano quintet and a chamber symphony for twelve solo instruments). (C.S.)

He was given a violin and lessons at the age of four, progressing very rapidly and beginning to compose a year later. Legend has it his first teacher was a Romany fiddler. He entered the conservatory of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna in 1888. His primary violin teacher was Joseph Hellmesberger. He took piano from Ernst Ludwig and harmony, theory, and composition from Robert Fuchs. He made his violin debut in 1889 in Slanic, Moravia. He remained in the Conservatory until 1894, regarded as a fully formed virtuoso at the age of 13. Nevertheless, he went on to the Paris Conservatory for more violin studies, and took harmony, theory, and composition from Dubois, Gédalge, Massenet, and Fauré. This mixture of late Romantic German and French training helped give his music its distinctive quality.

In 1897 the Concerts Colonne gave a concert of his works. The work he decided to designate as his first mature piece, the Poème Roumaine, Op. 1, premiered in 1898. That same year he started conducting the Romanian Philharmonic Society in Bucharest. Enescu quickly established one of the most important solo and chamber music careers of the time. His recital partner was the great French pianist Alfred Cortot, and he formed a piano trio with Louis Fournier and Alfredo Casella in 1902, and in 1904 the Enescu Quartet. He joined the faculties of the École Normale and the American Conservatory in Paris.

In the meantime, he took an active part in building a classical concert life in his native Romania. He formed a Philharmonic Orchestra in the town of Iasi, and a Composers' Society. He wrote his most famous works, the two Romanian Rhapsodies, Op. 11, for the Philharmonic. He also worked closely with the Conservatories in Bucharest and Iasi. In 1912 he funded a "George Enescu Prize" in composition, and played the world premieres of the winning works.

He made his first appearances in the United States in 1923, as violinist and guest conductor with the Philadelphia Orchestra. The brilliant young American prodigy, Yehudi Menuhin, became his most famous pupil. Others were Gitlis, Grumiaux, and Ferras. Through the 1930s he continued work as a violinist, conductor, teacher, musicologist, and organizer, while as a composer he toiled on his powerful opera Oedipus.

When World War II broke out, he happened to be at his country estate in Romania and was more or less stuck there for the duration. After the war ended, he went to New York, where he watched a Soviet-backed government take over his country. He remained in New York, increasingly incapacitated by arthritis. He gave a farewell concert with Menuhin in 1950, then returned to Paris.

Today, Bucharest houses a museum in his memory; likewise, the Symphony Orchestra of Bucharest and the George Enescu Festival are named and held in his hono. (C.S.))

“Romanian music has in Enescu one of the most refined composers of the century (i.e.XX). The necessity to comment on almost every single note proves an unusual care for detail; in some of his most significant works we find markings about nuances, execution and expression on almost every sound…..”

“Although contemporaries, Enescu and Bartok had very different destinies. Today we see what is common to both of them, what unifies them, or at least how those two great artists complete each other (…) Behold thus the difference between destiny and history: while Bartok has known an early recognition (early but for posterity), Enescu is more difficult to understand; he comes later with another “group”, the one of the isolated Greats, still full of romanticism, situated in between the XIX and XX century. While Bartok’s unhappiness redeemed itself in history, Enescu’s still continues, as is the case with other isolated Greats. (…) An important aspect distinguishes Bartok from Enescu and maybe the group framed by Boulez from the ones I called “isolated”.

Bartok is a composer who seems to have realized all his ideas: his works present themselves as great concert compositions, acting upon the public with perfectly calculated precision and strength. Bartok’s compositions became almost as popular as Ravel’s works and were equally integrated into concert life: the best of the best. Bartok’s influence on the younger generation was irresistible, fulgurous and immediately assimilated: Messiaen, Lutoslavki, the young Romanian school, all felt its power, exhausting quickly this influence(…)

If through Rimski-Korsakow, Stravinsky, Debussy and Bartok a European east-oriented music existed, with Enescu this music gained a dimension unknown before. The eastern mirage had been laden with colour and exoticism; it aimed at the raw and pagan aspect of Orient; this represented a necessary source of energy. With Enescu we speak about something more generally human; the color, even of an imaginary Orient as in Ravel, is secondary; it is not about conjuring the primitive world. In contact with the Orient the vision upon the world gets involved; the critical function of art concedes to the one of contemplation, of worship; not the crystallizing of an “objective world” in helleno-european forms, but its diving into a “total reality”; instead of geometric forms, life force growing upwards like a web over the world; a patience penetrated haste-free time, old since ages, timeless over ages. The musical expression of this conception relies in the unprecedented fineness of Enescu’s musical weaving, with its overflows of heterophony, with its lack of haste and even of finality, with its intonating subtleties and its evocative inimitable tone. (…)

Ballade (1895) for violin and piano
……….. my favourite works of Enescu are the ones in which he barely uses folkmusic or where the Romanian folkmusic is strongly transformed into his own language. These works are, among others, his opera Oedipe, his String Octet and the charming Ballade for violin and piano..

“Konzertstück” (1906) for viola and piano
The variety of influences on the young Enescu explains how in 1906 he could compose a work as Romantic and backward-looking as the Konzertstück, a full five years after the stylistic breakthrough of the Romanian Rhapsodies.

The viola's opening theme is one of considerable nobility, Brahmsian in tone and harmony, though it also bears a striking resemblance to a Russian folk tune that was employed to good effect by Tchaikovsky (in his first symphony, "Winter Dreams") and Stravinsky (in his early Symphony in E flat, Op. 1). Enescu gives the theme a thoroughly serious treatment, with rhapsodic development and impassioned writing for the viola, improvisatory and replete with full-bodied double-stops. A faster middle section develops the theme further, taking it into darker realms of minor keys, with increasingly cadenza-like writing for the viola. The turbulence is brief, however, and resolves into a glowing reprise of the opening measures. The fine coda is vigorous and satisfying.

BÉLA BARTÓK (1881-1945) was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered to be one of the greatest composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer (Gillies 2001). Through his collection and analytical study of folk music, he was one of the founders of ethnomusicology.

Bartók's music reflects two trends that dramatically changed the sound of music in the 20th century: the breakdown of the diatonic system of harmony that had served composers for the previous two hundred years (Griffiths, 7); and the revival of nationalism as a source for musical inspiration, a trend that began with Mikhail Glinka and Antonín Dvořák in the last half of the 19th century (Einstein, 332). In his search for new forms of tonality, Bartók turned to Hungarian folk music, as well as to other folk music of the Carpathian Basin and even of Algeria and Turkey; and in so doing he became influential in that stream of modernism which exploited indigenous music and techniques (Botstein, 6).


Suite for piano op 14 (1916)
The conciseness and coherence of the composition, the refinement of the capricious tempo changes and the impeccable construction, situate Bartok’s Suite Op.14 among his most representative and substantial works.
The haughty joviality of the Romanian-inspired folk motive in the First movement is contrasted by hallucinating moments, in between hesitation and obsession.
The second movement is a fulgurous scherzo; Romanian folk elements are heard in between the percussive squalls oscillating between playful and grotesque. The third movement is an Allegro molto, a threatening ostinato with the effect of a tornado. The fourth movement appears as a dramatic and totally unexpected gesture: a sudden loosening of the tempo, the repetitive sighs create the desolate atmosphere of the aftermath of a cataclysm.

Romanian Folk Dances (1915)
As many listeners are aware, Bartók was not only a devotee of folk music, but was one of the foremost experts of his time in Eastern European folk music, collecting over 6,000 folk melodies and arranging many of them for various instruments and ensembles. His Six Romanian Folk Dances are fairly straightforward renderings of their folk tune derivatives. Thus, as he did in his large collection for piano, For Children (1908-1910), Bartók elaborated little on the source materials, fashioning each piece to be a simple miniature of a half-minute to a minute in length. For the Folk Dances, Bartók used seven melodies from fiddle tunes (though the score is divided into only six sections). The tunes were collected between 1910 and 1912 in Maros-Torda, Bihar, Torda-Aranyos, and Torontal. Bartók was drawn to Romanian folk music, instrumental music in particular, because of its timbral diversity - Romanian folk dance tunes are often performed by ensembles comprised of diverse instrument combinations - and its variety and quality of tunes.

ÁSTOR PANTALEÓN PIAZZOLLA (1921 –1992) was an Argentinian tango composer and bandoneón player. His oeuvre revolutionized the traditional tango into a new style termed nuevo tango, incorporating elements from jazz and classical music. A virtuoso bandoneonist, he regularly performed his own compositions with different ensembles.

“As a composer and performer having appreciated this music from both sides, I can say that Piazzolla touches his audience in a direct and immediate way, his music identifying a state of being in which anyone of us could find himself. Yet unlike other music written for special occasions like some of Strauss’s waltzes or Souza’s marches or Elgar’s „Pomp and Circumstance“ marches, Piazzolla’s Tangos are written for the art itself. His piece El Grand Tango (1982) for cello and piano is in my opinion as serious a concert piece as for instance a Beethoven cello Sonata and a piece like Oblivion does not express the feeling of „oblivion“ but IS that feeling. This is where Piazzolla reigns: he does not describe a feeling or a world he simply IS that feeling and that world.”

ANATOL VIERU (1926 - 1998) was a music theoretician, influential pedagogue, and a leading Romanian composer of the 20th century. His music occupies an unusual middle ground between the age-old and the ultra-new: his initial musical impulses were born of the Romanian folksong he heard around him as he grew up, though he soon evolved towards the mainstream of European modernism (…) In 1951 he went to the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, where for three years he took composition lessons with Aram Khachaturian. (...)

He was to garner a number of prizes in the course of his life: his Cello Concerto won the Reine Marie-Jose Prize in Geneva in 1962, and four years later he won the Serge Koussevitzky Prize in Washington. Among Vieru's other distinctions were a Romanian State Prize (1949), another George Enescu Prize (1967), that of the Union of Composers and Musicologists three times (1975, 1977, 1979) and the Herder Prize (1986).

Vieru said of himself:
I refuse to be called an "avantgarde" composer (sometimes I am ahead of the avantgarde and sometimes behind it). . . Starting from the neo-modal example of the new generation of Romanian composers, I have developed and built out of it the microstructures of my own music. . . My ambition in my mature work is to generate complex musics with an ever-restricted vocabulary.

Vieru was active in a number of other capacities. In his earliest adulthood he was a conductor at the Bucharest National Theatre (1947-50). In 1970 he founded the concert series "Parallel Musics", and conducted its concerts for many years, presenting an enormous range of music, from Lassus via Ives, Skriabin and Schoenberg to Varese and Schnittke.

Teaching was another thread that ran through his life: he taught at the Bucharest Conservatoire (…) (1956-1998 n.n). Guest lecturing took him abroad, too: he spoke at the Sarah Lawrence College, in the Bronx, and the Juilliard School (1968), in West Berlin (1972-73), in Israel (1982- ‘83) and in the high temple of modernism, Darmstadt (1992-93). In 1992 he was composer-in- residence at New York University and lectured at Laval University in Canada.

MA-JO-R Music, for harp, flute, clarinet and string quartet (written between 1984 and 30.04.1985, Geneva)
“Ma-Jo-R Music is a word play on the name of the Queen Marie-José (to whom this piece is dedicated) These initials launch a motive of five sounds. Through calculations of finite differences, this motive gives birth to an entire sonorous accumulation. It is music in white, an ever gentle changing sonorous shroud. The music consists entirely of differences but never in a brutal contrast”.

9 pieces for the piano op. 157 (1998)
Vieru composed this cycle of piano pieces a short time before his death, in July-August 1998, in Sinaia, a small place in the mountains, where he spent some of his most productive moments  of creative isolation and contact with  nature, far away from the city turmoil. These pieces are very distinct in their character and themes; some are inspired by nature, either calm or raging (“Lightnings”, “Overflow”, “Windpipes”), other display benevolent humor (“Turtles”, “Soft Fingers”); some are reflections on life and death (“Ricercare”, “Cortege”).

“Discourse” refers not so much to a speech or flow of words on a specific subject, as to an inner monologue, meditation on life, with all it  implies - agreement, anger, resignation, doubt, open questions.
“Mirabilis” is a complex piece both in its contents and means of expression. The harmonic language and capricious melodic line seem to be subdued to a hidden flow of thoughts on nature’s beauty, on its miracles and enigmas that conceal menace or anxiety, on dualism of phenomena.

ADRIAN WILLIAMS is born in 1956 and gained an early reputation as a prodigiously (…) pianist before embarking on a distinguished career in composition that has spawned accolades including the Menuhin and Guinness Prizes.Long resident in the Welsh borders where the wild, open spaces of his surroundings have made a significant impact on his work, Williams’ music extends across a wide range of genres including orchestral, chamber and vocal music together with music for film and television. His eclectic, richly compelling creative voice speaks with an emotional directness that is rare in modern music, being diverse in its influences yet at once deeply personal and underpinned by both a desire to communicate and a powerful command of melody and structure.

Aruga (1996) Septet for flute, clarinet, harp and string quartet
This is a short but important work, written for the Brunel Ensemble at the request of 'Music Past and Present' in London. The emotion behind the piece is anger at the destruction of the English countryside for a major road near Newbury early in 1996. For the hundreds of people who actively protest, 'Aruga' is a keyword for emergency call-out, to which campaigners respond when they are needed quickly. The anger spills into the music, in which ideas proliferate, spread rapidly, like fire. Within only seven-and-a-half minutes the piece has burned out in smoke and ruins, like the ancient trees of Newbury.

MARIJN SIMONS is Conductor and Artistic Director of the Simons Ensemble and Concert Master of the Aachen Symphony Orchestra.

Simons' compositions have been commissioned and performed by such conductors and soloists as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Marin Alsop, Peter Eötvös, James MacMillan, Christian Lindberg, Evelyn Glennie and by orchestras like the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, The Hague Philharmonic, Aachen Symphony Orchestra, Prague Chamber Orchestra, Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra a.o. His works have had every year world premières including in the Cabrillio Festival, the Delft Chamber Music Festival and the Orlando Festival, where he was Composer in Residence. In 2010 and 2011 he conducts programs which include premières of his own works with the Simons Ensemble, Nieuw Amsterdams Peil, Ensemble 88, Studium Chorale and with members from the Aachen Symphony Orchestra. In May 2010 his fourth CD, "Simons conducts Simons", was released by Quintone label.


Marijn Simons was born in The Netherlands on 25th December 1982. He studied violin with Saschko Gawriloff, composition with Daan Manneke and James MacMillan and conducting with Ed Spanjaard and Jean-Bernard Pommier.

Water Song (2010)
Sunrise, Phoenix and Nocturnal Symphony are three paintings by Emil Ciocoiu forming the Water Song trilogy. In my composition I did not musically "describe" these paintings in a programmatic manner, but I took them as a starting point of inspiration from which a piece of music was born. It is a Phoenix-like rebirth of an already existing work of art, only without the destructive part. And by adding a new creation without destroying the older one, both creations will be able to come together during the world première of Water Song at the ZARVA Festival. There, Emil Ciocoiu's paintings will be exhibited directly behind the ensemble creating a totally new visual-auditory experience for the audience.

Fnn's Fantasy (2008)
Fnn's Fantasy is composed for my friend and colleague Andrew Simpson (Principal Violist of the Aachen Symphony Orchestra). Originally it was composed for solo viola and ensemble. This version was premièred during one of the Chamber Music Concerts at the Aachen Theatre with Andrew Simpson as soloist and members of the Aachen Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer. To make future performances of this piece more practical I asked the composer Adrian Williams to make a version for viola and piano. This version will be premièred at the ZARVA Festival in Vaals (The Netherlands) by Andrew Simpson and Karina Şabac. Fnn's Fantasy is a real fantasy piece (Fantasiestück). It's around 10 minutes long, (…) it was composed very impulsively. In the music I tried to keep a sketch-like character, which I think strongly belongs to a fantasy piece.